Directions Magazine We are only a few years away now from a milestone that distinguishes one data collection effort above all others, the decennial count that the U.S. Census Bureau conducts. The results of this monumental task, one which has been repeated once every 10 years since 1790, provide a quantitative snapshot of the nation that drives numerous political and social processes. READ MORE

FedScoopUsing challenges or competitions to bring non-traditional companies into government's orbit is now a somewhat familiar tool for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, but its deputy director said the agency is thinking about ways to keep things interesting.
"I could imagine a future where instead of running a competition where the prize is money, that we run a competition where the prize is data," said Sue Gordon at a breakfast in Washington.READ MORE

GeoMarketingWhile Congress is currently embroiled in a number of contentious high-profile political appointments, the naming of Paulette Marie Hasier as chief of the Geography and Map Division at the Library of Congress is naturally a quieter one.
But it is one that's notable, as the the historical archives and updates that Hasier will be managing could be important for location-based apps and startups.READ MORE

EE Times Europe Power ManagementResearchers at Michigan Technical University are calling for standard metrics to measure the health of smart grid power networks in a bid to improve cybersecurity.
Threats from hackers now means that the reliability of the electricity grid has to include both physical security and cybersecurity. Threats to either can trigger instability, leading to blackouts and economic losses. READ MORE

Inside GNSSSpeakers at last month's 9th Annual Conference on European Space Policy in Brussels wasted no time in addressing the somewhat worrying failure of a number of Galileo onboard clocks, as revealed by European Space Agency Director General Johan-Dietrich Woerner at a press briefing earlier in January in Paris. He made clear at the time that the clock failures, while indeed troubling, had had no effect on the operational integrity of the Galileo system.READ MORE

GPS WorldResearchers from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Leuven, Belgium, have designed authentication features that will make it more difficult to send out false Galileo signals.
Professor Vincent Rijmen and doctoral student Tomer Ashur from the Department of Electrical Engineering at KU Leuven have advised the European Commission on ways to make Galileo signals more difficult to falsify. READ MORE

Reuters via Thomas Reuters FoundationEurope's top utilities are planning to invest tens of billions of euros over the next three years to catch up with the green energy revolution, driving a flurry of takeovers by tech and engineering firms of niche, smart-energy innovators.
Upgrading power and gas networks used to be a hardware-based affair as long as steady baseload energy sources, such as coal and gas, accounted for most power generation.
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AccuWeatherIn April 2015, the Himalayan nation of Nepal was struck by a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake that claimed nearly 9,000 lives and injured tens of thousands more.
Based on observations through satellite data, some scientists suspect the quake, which lasted for approximately 20 seconds, may have also caused Mount Everest to shrink, according to a report from Smithsonian Magazine. READ MORE